1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a color filter substrate. More specifically, the present invention relates to a color filter substrate that is favorable for a liquid crystal display device equipped with a transmitting component and a reflecting component in a single pixel region.
2. Background Information
There are known apparatuses for manufacturing color filters by discharging color filter ink droplets from an inkjet head onto a color filter substrate. See for example Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application H10-260307.
A transflective liquid crystal display device is also known. See for example FIGS. 1 and 2 of Japanese Laid-Open Patent Application 2000-33778. A transflective liquid crystal display device can concurrently perform display in a reflective display mode, in which the display is performed by reflecting external light such as natural light or light from indoor lighting, and display in a transmissive display mode, in which the display is performed by causing light from a light source to be incident from the back side.
When a color filter substrate is manufactured by the discharge of ink droplets, a surface modification step is generally performed so that the surface of the target will have a desired liquid repellency or affinity. This is because performing surface modification corresponding to the ink droplets allows the target to be coated more evenly with the discharged ink droplets. Such surface modification can be accomplished by plasma treatment or UV irradiation. Nevertheless, when such surface modification is performed, it requires that the substrate including the target be separately moved to a specific treatment chamber, and this generally hampers efforts to shorten the manufacturing time.
Also, producing a transflective color filter substrate with an inkjet apparatus has been unknown so far.
A reflecting component and a transmitting component are provided for each filter element of a color filter substrate utilized in a transflective liquid crystal display device. The reflecting component is provided in order to reflect external light, while the transmitting component is provided in order to guide light from a light source to the filter element. Because the transmitting component is an opening provided in the reflecting component, there is a step at the boundary between the reflecting component and the transmitting component. When a color filter element is formed over this step by utilizing a discharge apparatus such as an inkjet apparatus, the area around the step is sometimes covered with the color filter material.
In view of the above, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure that there exists a need for an improved color filter substrate that overcomes the above-described problems of the prior art. This invention addresses this need in the art as well as other needs, which will become apparent to those skilled in the art from this disclosure.